holtz, william - spatial form in modern literature, a reconsideration

8/9/2019 Holtz, William - Spatial Form in Modern Literature, A Reconsideration

1/14

Spatial Form in Modern Literature: A ReconsiderationAuthor(s): William HoltzSource: Critical Inquiry, Vol. 4, No. 2 (Winter, 1977), pp. 271-283Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1342963.

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2/14

Spatial

Form

in

Modern

Literature:

A Reconsideration

William

Holtz

The

analogy

with

painting

is

persistent

and

long

honored

in

the

history

of

criticism,

and

in

aesthetics and

literary theory

the issue has been

extensively

studied

in its

many

ramifications.'

The

twin

problems

have

always

been to

identify

the

common

elements that the

analogy

draws

together

and to

distinguish

the essential differences that the

analogy

tends

to

blur;

and

in

confronting

these

problems

later writers must

acknowledge

both

the

primacy

of

Lessing's

Laocoiin

1766)

and the neces-

sary

dependency

of

their

own

body

of

commentary

on

that

paradigmatic

work. The

present

essay

is

no

exception

and

stands,

in

fact,

in

the em-

barrassingposition

of

a

commentary

upon

a

commentaryupon Lessing's

work.

What

I

would

attempt

here is to

reconsider

and,

perhaps,

to some

extent to rehabilitatethe

concept

of

spatial

orm

in

literary

criticism.

The term so used derivesfrom an

essay by

Joseph

Frank

which,

in

1945,

was accorded the

singular

distinction

of

serial

publication

n

the

Sewanee

Review.

Later,

condensed versions

were included

in

several

widely

used

anthologies

of

modern

criticism;

and more

recently

a

presumably

final

version

received the author's second

scrutiny

as

part

of

a

book-length

study

of modern

literature.2

The

original

publication

provoked

several

1.

For basic

accounts,

see Renssalaer

H.

Lee,

Ut Pictura Poesis: The Humanistic

Theory

of

Painting,

Art

Bulletin

22

(December

1940):

197-269;

W. K.

Wimsatt and

Cleanth

Brooks,

Literary

Criticism:

A

Short

History

(New

York,

1957),

chap.

13;

Brewster

Rogerson, The Art of Painting the Passions, Journal of the Historyof Ideas 14 (January

1953):

68-94;

and

Jean

H.

Hagstrum,

The Sister

Arts

(Chicago,

1958).

2.

Spatial

Form in

Modern

Literature,

Sewanee Review

53

(Spring,

Summer,

Au-

tumn

1945).

Reprinted

in

Critiques

and

Essays

in

Modern

Fiction:

1920-1951,

ed.

J.

W.

Aldridge

(New

York,

1952);

A

Grammar

of Literary

Criticism,

ed. Lawrence Hall

(New

York,

1965);

Criticism:The Foundations

of

Modern

Literary

udgment,

ed.

Mark

Schorer et al.

(New

271

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3/14

272

William Holtz

A

Reconsideration

of

Spatial

Form

closely

reasoned

attempts

at

refutation;

and

although

the

problem

would

seem to have died

in

the time

since,

we find

it

surfacing

again

in

an honorific reference to Frank's celebrated essay in a recent survey of

contemporary

criticism that

postulates spatial

form

as one

of

the most

interesting

issues. 3

Thus

if

Frank's

study

has not

quite

assumed

the

status

of a modern

classic,

it is at least established

among

the modern

canon of critical

essays

that deal with

the fundamental nature of litera-

ture. Yet

even

this most

recent

survey

of critical

issues

merely

nods to

Frank

without

examining

his

ideas,

so we

are

left

confronting

an

essay

of

major importance

that

has

elicited

serious

attention

only

from those who

disagree

with its

findings.

1

A

brief

summary

will

remind most readers of Frank's essential

points;

those who

here

encounter

the

concept

of

spatial

form for

the

first time

may

want

to

refer to

the

original

essay

in

which

copious

illustra-

tions

make

clear

the ideas that

underlie the

following

discussion.

Essentially,

Frank's

argument

is an extension of a

concept

fundamental

to general aesthetics that received its classical treatment in Lessing's Lao-

co6n.

Lessing,

disturbed

by

a

tendency

of

poetry

to become too

descrip-

tive

and

painting

too

narrational,

sought

to

rectify

centuries of

uncritical

acceptance

of

the

Horatian

ut

picturapoesis

by insisting

on the absolute

distinction between time and

space-and, consequently,

between

litera-

ture,

which

consists of verbal

symbols

(language)

occupying

a

sequence

of

time,

and

painting,

or visual art

generally,

which consists of visual

symbols

occupying

an area of

space.

From

this distinction

Lessing

con-

cludes that the

legitimate

province

of

literature is

narrative-things

in

action-while the legitimate province of painting is the visual form-an

arrangement

of

contemporaneous figures

in

a moment of

rest.

Frank

acknowledges

Lessing

as his model and draws

upon

the

temporal-spatial

distinction

to

describe a

quality

of

modern

literature that he

terms

spa-

tial

form.

Spatial

form is

not,

as we

might

guess,

necessarily

descrip-

tive

writing

aimed at

the

mind's

eye

but

rather

a form that

grows

out

of

the writer's

attempt

to

negate

the

temporal principle

inherent

in

lan-

York,

1948);

Critiques

and

Essays

in

Criticism:

1920-1948,

ed. R. W.

Stallman

(New

York,

1949). In Frank's The Widening Gyre(New Brunswick, N. J., 1963).

3.

Gregory

T.

Polletta,

ed.,Issues

in

Contemporary iterary

Criticism

Boston,

1973),

p.

24.

William

Holtz,

professor

of

English

at the

University

of Missouri-

Columbia,

is

currently

preparing

an

edition of an

unpublished

juvenile

manuscript

by

Charlotte

Brontie.



4/14

Critical

Inquiry

Winter 1977

273

guage

and

to force

apprehension

of his work as a total

thing

in

a

moment

of

time rather than as

a

sequence

of

things.

The

guiding

princi-

ple

here

is

Ezra Pound's

definition of

the

image

as that which

presents

an intellectual and emotional

complex

in

an instant of

time.

Thus

in

modern

literature we

find,

on

one

level,

the

disruption

(or

dis-

appearance)

of

the

sequential

principle

of action or

plot,

and on

other levels the

corresponding

distortion

of

sequential principles

of

syn-

tax

and

expository

discourse. The

sequential

or

temporal principle

is

replaced

by

the

principle

of

reflexive

reference :

that

is,

suspension

of

meaningful

reference

until

the whole

pattern

is

perceived.

To illustrate

this

concept,

Frank

ranges

over a

wide

variety

of

works.

In

Ulysses,

for

example,

the

narrative is so

fragmented,

the

key

allusions

and

symbols

so

scattered,

that the

reader

must

continually

suspend

ref-

erence

until

he

imperceptibly gains

a sense of Dublin

in

its

entirety:

Joyce

demands that the reader achieve the same

instinctive

knowledge

of

Dublin

life,

the

same sense of

Dublin

as a

huge, surrounding

or-

ganism,

that the Dubliner

possesses

as

a

birthright.

It is

this

birthright

that,

at

any

one

moment

of

time,

gives

the

native a

knowledge

of

Dub-

lin's

past

and

present

as a

whole;

and

it

is

only

such

knowledge

that

would enable the reader

.

.

to

place

all

the references

in

their

proper

context....

Joyce

...

proceeded

on the

assumption

that a

unified

spatial

apprehension

of

his

work would

ultimately

be

possible. 4

T.

S. Eliot's The

WasteLand and Ezra Pound's Cantos

provide

similar

illustrations;

and

the

works

of Flaubert

and

Proust,

although

more

conventional

in

structure,

demand

in

certain

passages

this

same

spatial apprehension.

A

major

part

of

Frank's

essay

is

devoted to an

analysis

of

Djuna

Barnes'

Nightwood

in

which he

demonstrates

that

the novel's

meaning

depends upon

allusions and

cross-references

independent

of

the

temporal

progress

of

the narrative: the reader must connect

passages reflexively

to

achieve a

unified,

whole

impression.

In

the final

part

of his

study,

Frank

attempts

to

interpret spatial

form

as

a cultural

phenomenon.

He turns

again

to a

German aestheti-

cian,

Wilhelm

Worringer,

whose

study

of the

history

of art

styles

pro-

vides

an

analogue

to

Frank's

capsule

history

of

literary

form.

Worringer

describes

the

history

of art

styles

from

primitive

to modern times

as an

alternation between

abstract,

non-representational styles

and

naturalis-

tic,

representational styles:

his basic

contention

is that the

former

pre-

vails

in

periods

when man

feels intimidated or

alienated

in

relation

to

his

universe,

the second

in

those

periods

when man

feels

confident

and

secure

in

his

world. The relevant contrast

is

between the

great

achieve-

ments

in

verisimilitude

made

possible by

Renaissance

discoveries

in

the

handling

of

perspective

and the

modern abandonment of three-

dimensional

form and

representational

values

generally:

the shift

in

4.

Frank,

The

Widening

Gyre,

p.

19.



5/14

274

William Holtz

A

Reconsideration

of Spatial

Form

Zeitgeist

can be

read

in

the

change

of

style.

The

connection

with

literary

form is made

by way

of the

relationship

between

temporal

values

and

three-dimensional perspective: although all visual art is inherently spa-

tial,

three-dimensional

art

is less

spatial

than

abstract,

two-dimensional

art,

for

depth

...

gives

objects

a

time-value because

it

places

them

in

the

real

world

in

which

events

occur.

Thus

modern

art

moves toward a

purer spatiality,

and

the abolishment of

representational

three-

dimensional

perspective

has its

exact

complement

in

the time-

transcending

devices

by

which modern literature

achieves

its

own

spa-

tial form. 5

The academic

response

to Frank's

essay

is

best

represented

by

Pro-

fessor G. Giovannini, whose essentially deprecatory essay is based on a

clear-sighted

analysis

of

the

problems

of

comparisons

between

the arts.

One of

his

basic contentions

is that the

common

element

upon

which

such

comparisons

rest

proves

generally

to be

an element

actually

given

(i.e.,

perceptible

to

sense)

in

one

object

and

objectively

analyzable

in

it,

and not

given

in

the other

but

merely

suggested

in

the affective

response

and

applicable

to the

object only by way

of

metaphor. 6

Frank,

it

may

be

said,

has

allowed

himself

to be

misled

by

the

pictorial metaphor

which,

although

useful

in

a

limited

way

for

suggesting

the

concept

he

struggles

with, introduces irrelevancies when used as an analogy to argue from

painting

to

literature.

For the

spatiality

he

finds

in

literary

form

is

not

the

spatiality

objectively

present

in

a

painting

or

a

sculpture (except

for

shaped poems

and other

such

typographical

devices);

rather,

this liter-

ary

spatiality

seems to be an

operation

of

the

mind

synthesizing

data

which

may

(in

some

instances Frank

cites)

form a

visualizable

image

with

communicable

spatial

dimension

but which

(in

most

of his

examples)

do

not

necessarily

cohere

in

any

demonstrably

spatial

way.

Moreover,

Frank's

argument

neglects

the unavoidable

problem

of

temporal

order

in data so synthesized: this order is objectively a feature of the work, and

must be dealt

with,

whether the data come

in

a normal

sequence

or no.

Thus the

spatial

order

of a

painting

and the

spatiality

of The Waste

Land

are of different

ontological

orders,

and the

critic should not

con-

fuse

them.

Such an

analysis

considerably

diminishes

the

authority

of Frank's

argument.

But

it

remains

to

be

determined

what

is

salvageable; despite

manifest

inadequacies,

the

theory

does seem

to touch

something

sig-

nificant

in

modern

literature,

and

if

the

pictorial

analogy

is

misleading

in

certain of its metaphorical extensions, there is yet an area of important

5.

Ibid.,

pp.

56-57.

6.

Method

in

the

Study

of

Literature

in Its Relation to

the

Other

Fine

Arts, Journal

of

Aestheticsand

Art

Criticism 8

(March

1950):

185-95,

quote

from

p.

190. See

also Walter

Sutton,

The

Literary

Image

and the Reader:

A

Consideration

of the

Theory

of

Spatial

Form, Journal

of

Aesthetics nd

Art

Criticism

16

(1957):

112-23;

Jan

Miel,

Temporal

Form

in

the

Novel, Modern

Language

Notes

84

(December

1969):

916-30.



6/14

Critical

Inquiry

Winter 1977 275

relevance.

For

metaphor

has heuristic

value,

giving

a local

body

and

a

name

to

conceptions

not

yet

established in the communal mental

econ-

omy

nor,

at

times,

nameable in

any

other

way

in the mind of

the

individual.

Frank's critics

may

have

in

fact identified

merely

what he has

not said without

perceiving

what real

import

his

figure

carries. We are

here

concerned,

it

would

seem,

with

the

essential

nature of

our

literary

perceptions,

with

the

phenomenology,

some

might

say,

of

literature.

Frank

and

his critics

with

equal

honesty attempt

to

define

their

percep-

tions,

and

my

own

concern

stems

from

my

initial

.impression

that both

are

equally right.

What

follows

is

my

attempt

to establish a

ground

within

which both

may legitimately

be

right.

2

One

measure

of

the

validity

of Frank's

insight

is

the

extent

to which

other versions of

his

ideas

appear

in

other contexts: for

if

spatial

form

refers to

something

real,

it

cannot

have

escaped

notice

by

other readers.

One

thinks,

for

example,

of

Northrop

Frye's

description

of the critic

viewing

all the

elements

of the

poem

as a

simultaneous

array

before

him;

or

of Gaston

Bachelard's evocative

descriptions

of

The

Poetics

of Space.

Or

Pound's interest

in

ideographic

script;

or

the

frequent

critical

association

of

modern literature

with

impressionist

painting.

Or

Eliot's

poet

synthe-

sizing

Spinoza,

the sound of the

typewriter,

and

the smell of

cookery

into

a unified whole. Or-at

the root of

it

all,

perhaps-Poe's

insistence

on

the unified effect of the

story

or

poem.'

All

of these

instances reflect

a

more or less casual

assumption

of the basic

premise

of

Frank's

essay.

More

recently

another

critic,

Frank

Kermode,

has

offered

an

alternative

description

of

this

general problem.

In

The

Romantic

Image8

he assesses

symbolist poetic theory;

here the verbal

image (or symbol),

autonomous

and

autotelic,

presumably

unites

meaning

and

feeling

without interven-

ing

reflection or discourse: the

image

so

hypostatized

seems

very

close

to

a

spatial

form,

and

certainly

the

suppression

of

discourse,

of reflec-

tion

generally,

follows

from the

disruption

of

syntax

and narrative that

results from the

impulse

toward

spatial

effects.

Provisionally,

we

might

say

that

Joseph

Frank's

essay

is

grounded

in

an

essentially

formalist

conception

of

the

literary

work as

artifact,

and

that

the

striking

features

7.

Northrop Frye, Literary Criticism,

in

The

Aims

and

Methods

of Scholarship

n

Modern

Languages

and

Literature,

ed.

James

Thorpe

(New

York,

1963),

p.

65.

See also Fables

of

Identity:

Studies in Poetic

Mythology

New

York,

1963),

p.

21.

Gaston

Bachelard,

The

Poetics

of

Space,

trans. Maria

Jolas

(New

York,

1964).

Ernest

Fenollosa,

The

Chinese Written

Character

as a Medium

for

Poetry,

ed. Ezra

Pound

(San

Francisco,

1969).

T.

S.

Eliot,

The

Metaphysical

Poets,

Selected

Essays

(New

York,

1950),

p.

247.

Edgar

Allan

Poe,

review

of

Twice-Told

Tales,

in

Works,

17

vols.,

ed.

James

A.

Harrison

(New

York,

1902),

11:

104-13.

8. Frank

Kermode,

The Romantic

Image

(London, 1957).



7/14

276

William Holtz

A

Reconsideration

of

Spatial

Form

of his

argument

result from

an

attempt

to

assimilate extended

works

(poetry

as

well as

fiction)

to a

theory

basically lyric

in

its

orientation: as

corollary,

we must

assume

that

the

modern

writers he

cites had them-

selves

operationally

defined the

concept

in

the course of

their

writing.

But

once

we

begin

to think

in

the terms

Frank offers

us,

larger

analogues

to

spatial

form

come

to

our

attention.

Both

T.

S.

Eliot

and

Northrop

Frye,

for

instance,

conceive of the

whole

of

literature

not as

history

but

as a

simultaneous

order

in

which

the discrete

work

partici-

pates.

Psychoanalytic

and

myth

criticism reveal

how

individual and cul-

tural

history

constitute an

order

simultaneous

with

the

present,

pressing

in

on

each

moment

(as

Bergson suggests)

like

a

huge

inverted

pyramid

of

past

time.

To

know

anything

at all about

evolutionary theory

is to

realize how

aeons of cumulative

experience presumably

are

lodged

im-

mediately

in

our

very

cells;

and,

as

Kenneth

Boulding

has

described

for

us,

the

cognitive development

of our

minds

can be understood

by

means

of the

model of

an

image

which,

although always assimilating

new ex-

perience, always

maintains

itself

as an

integrated

whole.9

Boulding's

theory

suggests

that the mode of

perception

that

Frank

invokes

for

understanding

early

twentieth-century

works

in

particular

seems to be

complemented

by

an

analogous

mode

for

larger

contexts across

a

wide

range

of intellectual

disciplines.

To shift the

tenor

of

the

metaphor

thus

from

the discrete

phenomenon

to

the

larger

order

beyond

it is to

shift

from a formalist to a structuralist

perspective;

and

perhaps

the most

comprehensive paradigm

for

contemplating

this

interiorized

spatiality

is

the

hypothetical linguistic

order described

in

1916

by

Ferdinand

de

Saussure.

Out

of his

discontent

with

historical

philology,

Saussure

devel-

oped

the

distinction

between the

synchronic

and

the

diachronic

study

of

language.

This

distinction itself

was

grounded

in

a

deeper

distinction

between

langue

(the

total

language-system

each

speaker

carries

with

him,

wholly present

in

every moment)

and

parole (the

individual

speech-act,

temporally

successive,

largely

constrained

by

the

langue

but

ultimately

modifying

it).

And

nothing

is clearer than Saussure's

attribution of

prime reality

to

langue:

to the

degree

that

something

is

meaningful,

it

will

be found to be

synchronic. 10

Thus Frank's

account

of

spatial

form

can be seen

as a

partial

de-

scription

of what has been a

general

shift

(since

about

1914)

in

our

ways

of

inquiring

about

our

experience;

his

choice of

terms from

Lessing,

moreover,

may

in

fact

be

a sound intuition rather than

an

arbitrary

anachronism. For this shift

is

itself

perceivable

in the

science

of

physics

as

well;

and

to choose for

modern literature the term that

Lessing

would

9.

Eliot,

Tradition

and

the

Individual

Talent,

Selected

Essays,

p.

5.

Frye,

Anatomy

of

Criticism:

Four

Essays

(Princeton,

1957),

p.

17. Kenneth

Boulding,

The

Image

(Ann

Arbor,

1956).

10.

Reported

by

Fredric

Jameson

in his The

Prison-House

of

Language

(Princeton,

1972),

p.

5.



8/14

Critical

Inquiry

Winter 1977

277

proscribe

for literature

is not so much

perverse

as

symptomatic.

Those

who

insist

on the

essentially

time-bound nature of

literature,

in

terms

of

both

the

duration

of our

reading

and

the

progressive

nature of

the

constructs,

are

the heirs of

Lessing,

whose

analysis

rests

upon

an abso-

lute

disjunction

of time

and

space.

That

this

disjunction

is a

convenient

assumption

appropriate

only

to

certain areas

of our

experience

is

now

apparent

to

anyone

conversant

with

the

course of

modern

physics.

The

classical

physics

of

Lessing's day

could

tolerate the

dichotomy

(although

the essential

inadequacy

of this

mode of

thought

would soon

be noted

prophetically

by

Coleridge);

but

just

as for Saussure

problems

in

philol-

ogy

and

syntax

led

to

a

recasting

of

language

in

synchronic

terms

(of

a

dialectic between langue and parole), so have problems in physical

phenomena

led

to a

recasting

of

physical reality

in

terms of a

unified

spatial-temporal

field

within

which

the

substantial

entities

of

everyday

temporal

experience

have

only

a

contingent

status in

a

larger

structure

whose

simultaneity

is a

function of

the

speed

of

light.11

Thus,

for

litera-

ture,

although

both

the

spatial quality

that Frank

finds

and the

temporal-

ity

his critics

insist

upon

can

be

converted

into

each

other

by

posing

the

appropriate questions,

the

emphasis

that

Frank

seeks and

the

terms he

chooses can be said

to mark a

transitional

moment

between formalist and

structuralist conceptions. That is, the problems posed by large narrative

works for an

aesthetic

grounded

in

lyric

forms

seem

to

have moved

Frank

to

go

beyond

a

merely

substantialist

metaphor

(the

well-wrought

urn),

beyond

even a

psychological

metaphor

(the

image),

to an

essentially

scientific

metaphor

that

assimilates both

the

objective syn-

chronicity

of

substantial forms and

the relational

synchronicity

of mod-

ern

structuralist

conceptions.

We

find

ourselves

contemplating

these

problems:

(1)

that of

part

to

whole

(e.g.,

individual

image

to

whole

poem,

and of

poem

to

poetry)

as

well as (2) that of the synchronic to diachronic (e.g., syntax to image, plot

movement to

structure),

and

(3)

that of

language

to

reality,

of

word

to

thing,

of

parole

to

concrete

experience,

of

langue

to

culture

generally-all

of

these

under

the

comprehensive

distinction

between the media of

space

and

time

introduced

to

literary

theory by

Lessing

and

invoked

for

our

own

time

by

Joseph

Frank.

We must

speculate

that

these

problems

are forced on us

by

the

inherent

limitations of our

perceptual

and con-

ceptual

endowment.

For

the

problems

of

physics

lead

to

problems

in

epistemology:

the

strictly

empirical

scientist

may

be content

to

observe

that

light seems to act at some times as though it were composed of

discrete

particles,

at other

times

as

though

it

were

continuous

waves;

but

the

equal validity

of each

account

suggests

that

the

difference

is

a

matter

11.

For

a

lucid,

nontechnical account

of the

problems

of

modern

physics,

see Niels

Bohr,

Atomic

Physics

and

Human

Knowledge

(New

York,

1958).

For

the

impact

of

these

problems

on

the

artist,

see

Douglas

Angus, Quantum

Physics

and the

Creative

Mind,

The

American Scholar 30

(Spring

1961):

212-20.



9/14

278

William Holtz

A

Reconsideration

of Spatial

Form

of

having

to

adopt

mutually

exclusive

perspectives

to

perceive

different

features

of

the same

phenomenon. Complementarity

is

the term

in-

voked here to identify the dizzying vision of a reality intuited as whole

but

describable

only

as the

hypothetical

sum

of

partial perspectives.

At

most,

we

can

hope

that the

sum of our

perspectives

is

the sum

of

reality;

more

humbly,

we

must

recognize

that

this

may

not

be

so;

but

in

either

case,

the scientific

discipline

that we

trust most

implicitly

for

an

account

of

the

ultimate

nature

of

things suggests

that to

the

extent that

our

knowledge

is

empirical

it is

also

modal.

The

paradox

has

been formalized

by

one school

of

modern

linguis-

tics which

bases

its

investigations upon

a

theory

of

knowledge

derived

from physical

theory.12

According to this theory, we perceive the world

in

three

modes,

each of which

has

its

linguistic

counterpart:

as

particle

(a

discrete

unit,

such as

a

single

word),

as

wave

(a

flowing

continuum,

such

as

the sound

patterns

of

speech),

and as

field

(a

self-contained network

of

relationships,

such as

the

grammar

of

a

language).

Each mode

can

account for

the world

in

a certain

way;

presumably,

we

adopt

each

mode

as

we need

it;

and all we know

of

our world

is

a

function

of

the

com-

plementary relationships

of

these modes each to

the

others.

What

seems

clear,

whether we

contemplate language

or

the

physical

world,

is

that

particle and field are phenomenologically (and metaphorically) spa-

tial

conceptions

(simple

and

compound),

whereas

the wave

phenome-

non

operates

in

a

temporal

dimension

and is

named

by

a

temporal

metaphor.

To

embrace this

severely

qualified

theory

of

human knowl-

edge

is

not

merely

to

ease some

difficult

either-or

dilemmas;

it

also

is

to

recognize

that

any single

modal

account

of a

phenomenon

is

necessarily

both

incomplete

and

the result

of

highly specific

needs

or

interests.

Perhaps

the

greatest

value

in

such

a

theory

is

heuristic,

as

it

forces

us to

attend

to

aspects

of

experience

that

we

might

otherwise

overlook.

Thus, poem as field, a self-contained area of our experience in

which

particular

words

and

images

vibrate

in

a

dynamic,

charged,

mutually-supportive

relationship.

Thus

poem

as

wave,

a

sonorous,

or

syntactical,

or

rhetorical,

or

narrative continuum

in

time.

Thus

poem

as

particle,

a unit within

some

larger

field,

such

as

the

body

of an author's

work or the literature of

a

distinct tradition or

period.

Within

this

tri-modal

scheme we

can

place

not

only

Frank

and his critics

but such

structuralist

conceptions

as Eliot's

and

Frye's.

Clearly

the formalist

(or

aesthetic,

or

symbolist)

criticism of our time has focused

on the self-

12. Kenneth

L.

Pike,

Language

as

Particle, Wave,

and

Field,

Texas

Quarterly

2

(Summer 1954):

37-54.

Pike

apparently

derived

his theories from

analogies

with

physics,

but the

similarity

of his

field

to Saussure's

langue

is close. I

have

tried

to

suggest

exten-

sions

of Pike's

field

theory

to

literary study

in Field

Theory

and

Literature,

Centennial

Review

2

(Fall

1967)

532-48.

Recent

neurological experiments

indicate

that our verbal and

spatial

activities are functions of different halves of our brain:

see

Newsweek,

6

August

1973,

p.

61.



10/14

Critical

Inquiry

Winter 1977

279

contained

field of the

poem-in-itself,

often

under the

metaphor

of

ar-

tifact

(the

wrought

urn or

jeweled

bird),

while the

emerging

structuralist

criticism

tends

to efface the

individuality

of the artifact

for the sake

of

clarifying

the

larger

field of which it is a

part.13

In either

case,

syn-

chronicity

is

a condition

of

knowledge,

and the

spatial

metaphor

Frank

applies

to the first

is

equally applicable

to the

second;

and each

can

be

read as

symptomatic

of

a modern discontent

with

(1)

the substantialist

implications

of

metaphors

of

organism

or

artifact,

(2)

the

temporal

di-

mension

of

meaning

as manifest

in

syntax,

rhetoric,

or

narrative

(these

implicitly

identified

with

philosophy

and

science),

and

(3)

the

temporal

sequences

of

history

and

evolution as connections

between

individual

works. This

impulse

toward relational

concepts may

in fact be the

in-

tellectual

version

of the abstractionist

tendencies Frank connects

with the

general

malaise

of our

culture; or,

as another writer has

put

it,

a world

in

which the natural

order has been

largely

supplanted

by

a

vast

network of

communication

systems may very

well

be

thought

of

in terms

of the

structure of

language

itself.14

3

If we take

seriously

the

hypothesis

that

knowledge

resides

in com-

plementary

modes,

then,

in the

broadest

sense,

both Frank and his critics

are

correct. Considerable

advantage

accrues

from

this

point

of view. We

can

say,

for

example,

that

both

Ulysses

and

Great

Expectations

have

a

spatial

dimension as we

contemplate

their

achieved

orders.

But if we

imagine

Great

Expectations

n

the

narrative manner

of

Ulysses,

it becomes

apparent

that however the

story

might

remain the

same,

the

temporal

component

of our total

experience

would be

radically

different.

And

although we can say that Joyce's technique is

to the end of

enforcing

one

mode

of

perception

over

another

(this

constituting,

in

part,

its moder-

nity),15

the

technique

does

not

obliterate the

temporal

sequence

but

rather moves

along

unfamiliar tracks. This is

to

pose

again

Frank Ker-

mode's commonsense

observation:

that our

continuing

discourse

about

modern literature

apparently depends upon temporal

connections

within the works other

than the

narrative, rhetorical,

and

syntactical

sequences

that

have

been abandoned.16 What these

poetic

sinews

are

remains to be accounted

for,

but to

the

extent that

they

apparently

depend heavily upon

covert contributions

by

the

reader

to the

continuity

13. The

point

is made

clearly by

Polletta,

pp.

18-19.

His

survey

of criticism

contains

a

good

bibliography

on structuralism:

see

n.

30,

pp.

175-76.

14.

Jameson,

p.

ix.

15.

This

emphasis

is

perhaps

best understood

in terms of

the

concept

of de-

familiarization

suggested

by

the Russian

Formalists. See

Jameson, pp.

54-59.

16.

Kermode,

p.

155.



11/14


12/14

Critical

Inquiry

Winter

1977 281

time,

suggests

that this

pole

is

somehow

less real than

time

itself,

which

we

may identify

as the

necessary

condition of our

participation

in

the

natural

order;

whereas

that

which

we call

space

is of a

different

order,

emerging

as

other

as consciousness

separates

itself from the flux of

time and constructs its

symbolic

orders

in

language,

art,

and

science.

To this

extent,

picture

may

necessarily always

occupy

a

privileged

relationship

to

language

as

it

manifests the timelessness that culture

strives for

in

its contention

with

the

perpetual

novelty

of

mere

chronic-

ity.

To

say

this

is not

to

reduce literature

to

description

but

merely

to

recognize

description

as a

highly

formalized

version

of this

relationship.

Lessing's

contention

in

the

eighteenth

century

was with

certain abuses

of

this formal

relationship

deriving

ultimately

from both

the

conquest

of

the

European

imagination

by

the

glories

of Renaissance and

baroque

painting

and

the

academic codification

of casual remarks

from

classical

antiquity

that did

in

fact

recognize

a basic

complementarity.18

Lessing's

account

itself,

despite

its clear-cut

theoretical

distinction

between

the

arts,

teeters

on the

edge

of

paradox:

the vaunted

example

of

the shield of

Achilles can

be

said

to

reduce his distinction

to one

between

still and

moving

pictures,'9

while a later consideration

of

the

problem

renders

the whole matter

very

problematical,

as he

is

unable to exorcise a re-

sidual

pictorialism

at

the

heart of

his

conception

of

language:

Poetry

must

try

to raise its

arbitrary

signs

to natural

signs:

that

is

how it differs

from

prose

and

becomes

poetry.

The means

by

which

this is

accomplished

are the tone of

words,

the

position

of

words,

measure,

figures

and

tropes,

similes,

etc.

All

these make

arbitrary

signs

more

like

natural

signs,

but

they

don't

actually change

them

into natural

signs; consequently

all

genres

that use

only

these

means

must be looked on as lower kinds of

poetry;

and the

highest

kind

of

poetry

will be

that

which

transforms

the

arbitrary

signs completely

into natural signs. That is dramatic poetry ..

.20

Here

we

might say

that

Lessing

reaches the

limit

of

his verbal-

temporal

theory

at

just

about the

point

where

Joseph

Frank

begins

his

pictorial-spatial

one-that

is,

at

the

point

of the verbal

image.

And

although

a bias toward the

drama,

with

its inherent

temporal

spectacle,

saves

Lessing's theory,

there remain other

genres

in

which the described

effect

can

only

be a

subjective

image, projected upon

the mind's

eye

with

all

the

illusionary

effect of

painting

itself.

Joseph

Frank,

we

might guess,

beginning

with a

commitment to

modern

literature,

found

in

Pound's

doctrine of the

poetic

image

a

key

to its

essential nature

and

in

Lessing's

18.

Not

only

Horace's misconstrued

ut

pictura

poesis

but also

Simonides'

painting

is

mute

poetry,

and

poetry

a

speaking picture.

See also Wimsatt

and

Brooks,

pp.

271-75.

19.

Wimsatt

and

Brooks,

pp.

269-70.

20. Cited

from

Rene

Wellek,

A

History of

Modern

Criticism,

1750-1950,

4 vols.

(New

Haven,

1955),

1: 164-65.



13/14

282

William Holtz

A

Reconsideration

of

Spatial

Form

basic

theory

a

rationale-by-inversion

that

described modern

literature

in

terms of

a

break with the

past.

And

just

to the

extent

that

Lessing

could

not

deal

with

wholly

legitimate

scenic or

lyric

effects,

Frank

cannot

deal

with

whatever

sequential ligatures

run

through

the modern

works

that

his extension of

Pound's

insight

allows

him

to

bring

together.

But

perhaps

the

most

significant

contrast is that

although Lessing's

un-

exorcised

pictorial

residuum is an

image

of man

acting,

Frank's

abstracted

spatial

order

is

offered

as

a

displacement

of

sequences

of

human

action

by

an

image

of

man

perceiving.

So

long

as the

sense

of this

spatiality

is

that of

the

specifically

human

percept,

we remain with Less-

ing

in

the

realm of individuals

and

individual

works

of

art. When

we

pursue

the

spatial principle beyond

the individual

percept,

we

find our-

selves

verging

on those

structuralist

synchronic

orders that

achieve

their

persuasive

power

at the

expense

of

individual men

and individual

works.

To

move

in

this latter

direction

is,

of

course,

to

move

away

from the

study

of

literature

toward

general

aesthetics

and

ultimately

toward

semiotics,

a

progress implicit

in

Frank's own assimilation of modern

literature

to abstract

art and both to a cultural

angst

that

presumably

manifests itself

in

other

ways.

Useful

as such

thinking may

be,

and how-

ever

consonant

it

is with the modern devaluation of

all that is

uniquely

human,

it

is also

a

flight

from

a

responsible scrutiny

of

a

directly

intuited

relationship

with the

work

itself.

Better,

to the extent that our

study

is

a

humanistic

discipline,

to

follow

Lessing's example

and

push

our

descrip-

tion of this

relationship

to whatever

suggestive

impasse

our

language

may

lead.

And,

I

must hasten to

add,

Frank

does this himself

in

reaching

for his

spatial

metaphor

as

a

most

honest account of his

perceptions:

it

is

the

tempting

transformation

in

realms

beyond

the individual instance

that

seems

dangerous

here.

It is the

specific spatiality

of our

involve-

ment

with individual

works,

traditional as well

as

modern,

that we would

do

well

to

scrutinize

rather than a

hypostatized spatial principle.

For the

spatial

aspects

of this

involvement,

however

objectively

trivial,

constitute

a

rich and

complex

body

of

data

adhering

to,

inextricably

bound

up

with,

the more

easily analyzable

time-flow of lexical

statement

and narra-

tive

progression.

Gaston Bachelard

has

imaginatively

illuminated certain

areas

of

this

experience;

presumably

an

equally

imaginative

and

spe-

cifically

pictorial

treatment awaits each of

what Helmut

Hatzfeld enu-

merates

as the seven

constant

cases of

problems

in

the relations between

literature

and

art,21

problems

which

by

and

large

have been

the

province

of

historical scholars rather

than

critics.

There

remain

to

be

written,

for

instance,

basic studies in some measure

complementary

to A. A. Men-

dilow's

Time in

the

Novel,

Frank

Kermode's

The Sense

of

an

Ending,

and

Hans

Meyerhoff

's Time in

Literature

in

which the

genesis

of

the

spatial

metaphor

would be

fully explored

and

its

validity

demonstrated

in

21. Helmut

Hatzfeld,

Literature

through

Art

(New

York,

1952),

chap.

6.



14/14

Critical

Inquiry

Winter 1977

283

specific analyses

of the

configurations

of our involvement

with

discrete

works.22

Studies which move in this direction will move (metaphorically)

from

space

toward

picture,

as

did

Lessing's,

although

what we

find in

them

will be no

more conventional

description

than are

Lessing's

covert

images

conventional drama.

Rather,

these

studies will uncover

figures

created

by

the

demand of

the works

upon

us and

define the

space

in

which

those

figures

endure as we

engage

them. This

space,

neither

within

ourselves nor

in

the

empirical

order,

we

might

well

term verbal

space,

for

it

problematically

mediates

between other

spatial

realms as

language

mediates

between

the world

and

our

thought

about

it.

Other

dramas than Lessing could conceive of take shape in this space that

modern

literature so

emphatically

thrusts us into

and that

Joseph

Frank

has

named.

It

remains

for an

adequate

criticism

to

explore

the

di-

mensions

of

this

space

and

to

define its relation

to the

inner

and

outer

realms

of

which it is

so

problematically

a

simulacrum.23

22. Bachelard

gives

us

an

inventory,

as it

were,

of

spatial

motifs.

Georges

Poulet

has

treated both

literary

time and

space

in

terms of

specific

writers but

typically

dissolves

individual

works into a

description

of

the

quality

of the

writer's

consciousness:

see

Studies n

Human

Time

(Baltimore,

1956)

and The

Interior

Distance

(Baltimore, 1959),

both

trans.

Elliot

Coleman.

23.

The term

verbal

space

I

take

from

Cary

Nelson,

The

Incarnate Word:

Literatureas

Verbal

Space

(Urbana,

Ill.,

1973).

This book

is

the most

recent of

the few

efforts

to

consider

the

spatial

metaphor

seriously,

in

this

instance under the

aspect

of

body.

For

another

approach,

see

Sharon

Spencer,

Space,

Time

and

Structure n the

Modern

Novel

(New

York,

1971);

here,

space

is

manifest as

architecture.

See also

Hugh

Kenner,

Flaubert,

Joyce

and

Beckett: The

Stoic

Comedians

(Boston, 1962),

for a

discussion of

the book

as

typographic

object;

and

William

Holtz,

Thermodynamics

and the

Comic and

Tragic

Modes,

Western

Humanities

Review

25

(Summer

1971):

203-16,

for

an

extension of

spatial

form

to a

theory

of

comedy.

holtz, william - spatial form in modern literature, a reconsideration

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